We announced the Marŝarto Awards at the start of 2023, complementing our existing Sound Walk September Awards. Where the SWS Awards focus on sound walks, the Marŝarto Awards would recognise walking art, excluding sound walks, produced in the previous year.
We gathered an excellent Grand Jury, and eventually received some 60 submissions. A success.
This was also the first year that, for both awards, besides a trophy, the winners would walk away with cash prizes. The value of the prizes depends on the membership support we receive from the community, and though we came close to the threshold of doubling the prize money, we eventually fell short, meaning that this year’s first-prize winner walks away with 250 euros, with the honourable mention taking home 100 euros.
For 2024, the same rules will apply, so do consider becoming a supporting member of WLC. You will support the platform, and the community.
For 2023, it was a tight race between the eventual winner and honourable mention, with the difference in scoring, by the Grand Jury, being extremely small, but both pieces setting themselves apart from the rest of the field.
And so, here we have…
Winner: Walking the Questions
The winner of our inaugural Marŝarto Awards is Walking the Questions, a long walk through Spain, by Monique Besten.
Here’s our Grand Juror Claudia Zeiske, talking about the work.
Walking the Questions was a performative solo-walk by Monique Besten where, over six weeks, she walked across the north of Spain in what she later found out was the hottest month on earth, ever recorded. Starting from her home in Barcelona, she took questions and gathered new ones from people and other encounters all the way to Galicia, in north-western Spain. Questions that relate to our existence among each other on our planet. Questions that we all want and need to ask ourselves.
Along the way, she wore the 8th of her Soft Armours, a 3-piece suit, neatly embroidered with the questions gathered, inviting others to start conversations on whether it is the men in suits that brought us to this heated up state of our planet? On the walk, she says, “people are your audience as well as you are their audience”.
Endurance art walks are often associated with male artists, who claim that their long walks themselves are the art. Monique Besten is one of very few long-distance female walkers, whose practice is a complex entanglement of bodily achievement, female associated crafts, and poignant questioning of our relationship to our planet where, as she says, an encounter with a person is not deeper than an encounter with a stone or a plant. What remains are many invisible traces and stories, that find their home in her writing, her embroidery, and her conversations with others along her long paths trodden.
Honourable mention: The (Future) Wales Coast Path
The honourable mention for the Marŝarto Awards 2023 goes to The (Future) Wales Coast Path, an expansive project connected to climate change, lead by Alison Neighbour.
Here’s Grand Juror Fiona Hesse‘s interpretation of Alison’s work.
What will our shorelines look like in the future? Where will the sea begin, by then? And will we be able to still inhabit the areas we are living in now?
All over the world, rising sea levels, floods, hurricanes, and erosion are threatening coasts and shorelines, forcing those who live there to leave their homes and seek refuge elsewhere.
The (Future) Wales Coast Path visualizes the global impact of climate change by connecting two communities that are actually far apart: the Gwent Levels in South Wales and the Indian island of Sagar. While the first is a (hopefully soon protected) inter-tidal zone of saltmarshes, mudflats and sands where the sea can spread out at high tide, the densely populated Indian island south of Kalkutta is already being flooded by salt water and battered by cyclones at ever shorter intervals, making life there even more precarious in the future.
In 2022 communities in both areas were invited to walk together and reflect on the current as well as future shorelines. The results of this impressive walking piece can still be visited, the paths rewalked and knowledge expanded by downloading maps of the regions, expedition cards as well as essays and photos, guiding steps and thoughts.
The highlight in the truest sense of the word are the small lighthouses that can still be found at Newport Wetlands RSPB Reserve on the Gwent Levels; and in Langport village, in Somerset. They link to live tidal data from the Bay of Bengal – as the tide elevates in Bengal, the lights will emit a warning wave pattern signaling both the current threat and potential future risks. If the pattern switches to an SOS message, it indicates that the tidal levels are perilously high, posing a threat to the Bengal community due to an impending storm surge.
The (Future) Wales Coast Path is a remarkable reminder of how fragile and worthy of protection our existence is – highly recommended!
What’s next?
We’re delighted that all members of the Grand Jury stay on for another year, with their maximum tenure being three years. If you’re interested to join our community of reviewers, contact us. We tend to draw members of the Grand Jury from our Online Jury, and we’re always looking to expand this excellent group of experts.
Submissions for the Marŝarto Awards 2024 are already open, and we’ve received the first submissions.
As with the SWS Awards in 2024, and with Marŝarto23, we are now permanently extending the eligibility window to work that was produced after the start of the previous year. So, for Marŝarto24, work produced on or after January 1 2023 is eligible.
In addition, the public, you, now also has a say in constructing the shortlist; the piece with the most votes from the public that’s not already in the shortlist, based on the votes from the Online Jury, will be added to the shortlist.
So, what are you waiting for? Submit your work today!
